UXO
by RadioShack84
Summary: Reese struggles through a rough night following "Dead Reckoning". Companion piece to "Begin Again". I suggest reading that one first for clarity.


Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest. Written for enjoyment, not money.

* * *

Jason Santori shook his head as he peered out the massive windows of John Reese's apartment and admired the view of the city lights. It was late, close to 2 a.m. Had he been at the hospital, he'd have been having coffee with Frank and enjoying the brief lull that fell between the evening-shift patients and the post-last-call alcohol poisoning cases. Instead, he'd finished off a cup of tea and his patient charts from the previous day, played through nineteen levels of Tetris, removed his contact lenses, and was now pacing the length of an apartment the likes of which he and Maddie would never come close to affording whilst marveling at the unlikely series of events that had transpired to place him there.

It had started with a fairly straightforward job interview two years ago, in which Dr. Izard had failed to mention a certain VIP patient of his, one Mr. Finch. After a rather uncomfortable first meeting, Jason had been curious enough to fill in a few important blanks on his own, and Frank had filled in the medically-necessary ones, but he still knew little about the man whose company signed his paychecks, and even less about the man whose living room he was currently standing in. John and Harold were decent men, though. Jason felt fairly confident of that, having seen both at their worst. Those were the times when a person's true nature was most difficult to hide.

A rustle of sheets and indistinct mumbling alerted him that he might soon get another glimpse of Reese's, and he moved back across the open space silently, nodding to himself in satisfaction at hearing Harold's quiet snoring from the direction of the sofa. John, on the other hand, was tossing and turning in his sleep, apparently caught in the throes of an unpleasant dream, but before Jason could consider whether to wake him he seemed to accomplish the job on his own. Santori heard a sharp intake of breath and saw John's body jerk. He relaxed briefly, but then grew restless all over again as he slipped quickly back into a fitful sleep, entirely unaware of the pained moan that had escaped him.

When he didn't settle after several minutes and moaned again, Jason frowned in concern. Although he'd been warned on various occasions, both by Harold and by John himself, that any sort of physical contact while the ex-military man was sleeping wasn't a smart idea, in this case he chose to risk it. "John?" he called softly, stepping around the bed to Reese's side. "It's Jason. Can you wake up for me?" Receiving no response, the young P.A. deduced the least-dangerous place to stand (just in case) and gently laid his hand on a too-warm shoulder. "John?"

Once more Reese's body jolted, but he didn't lash out and stilled when he finally got his eyelids open enough to see through. "Santori? What're you doing here?" he mumbled in confusion.

"Harold called me. You collapsed in the hallway," Jason explained as he sat down on the edge of the bed and lightly grasped Reese's wrist, pressing two fingers against the pulse point. He was expecting the rapid beat that answered, but when it began to pick up speed, he glanced down at John, who was searching the semi-darkness with eyes that at first held panic, then uncertainty.

"I'm home..."

The astonishment in Reese's voice wasn't lost on Jason and he just nodded, giving the other man a moment to process while he cleaned a smudge from his glasses with the edge of his t-shirt. "You have been for a few hours now, actually, but I can't say I'm surprised you don't remember. You, my friend, have had better days."

Reese snorted in apparent agreement and draped an arm across his face, shielding his eyes. The loft was only dimly lit - a single lamp in a far corner, switched to its lowest setting - so it was on the tip of Jason's tongue to ask Reese if he had a headache, but a sudden hitch in his breathing told a different story. When John lowered his arm a minute or so later, his eyes were bright with more than just fever and stayed focused on the ceiling. Santori's brow creased in empathy. It was a perfectly normal cathartic response to stress, but he wondered exactly what level of stress had been necessary to provoke such a response in Reese. A year ago he'd seen the man endure two very painful bullet wounds with little medication and zero complaints, where most people would have been begging for relief, but it seemed that being held in a hostage situation for the past several days had taken a far greater toll.

Jason's instinct was to ask questions, to try to help in some way, but he knew it would neither be appreciated nor work, so he kept his inquiries to himself and waited. By the time John's troubled gaze met his again, he'd schooled his expression to one of sober understanding. "Harold told me bits and pieces," he said quietly. "Apologies if I understated."

Reese shook his head. "With Finch, I'm sure it was more bits than pieces."

"You know him well," Santori affirmed. "More to the point, though, it's clear you're having some pain, enough that it's interfering with your sleep. That's my fault. I wanted to see you conscious before I gave you anything, but now that I have, I want you comfortable so you can rest."

"Four."

Jason paused, arching an eyebrow. "Uh-huh. Make that a seven if I'm remembering John Reese Pain Math correctly. Add one point because it's you, two for hesitation, and three if I don't even get to ask the question first."

John shrugged and then winced.

"Your ribs?" Santori guessed, all traces of teasing gone.

"Yeah."

The P.A. nodded thoughtfully. "You could've cracked one or two. The bruising is serious enough, but it would take an x-ray to confirm." He got up and retrieved some items from his bag. "Let me just grab another round of vitals and then I'll get you set up."

Reese didn't answer, but lay still while Jason took his blood pressure and temperature and listened carefully to his breathing. "I know you haven't had anything to eat in awhile," Santori said, draping his stethoscope around his neck. "Do you feel up to trying something? Soup or crackers, maybe?"

John's complexion faded a shade paler, decidedly toward the green end of the spectrum, and he swallowed thickly. Jason gave his leg a sympathetic pat as he stood. "That's answer enough. I do want you to have some water, though," he said as he started prepping a syringe.

"No morphine."

Santori glanced up at Reese and shook his head, undeterred. "You need it, John. I'm not giving you oral painkillers on an empty stomach, and the level of pain you're having isn't good for anyone, especially not when they're as worn out as you are right now."

Reese squinted to read the numbers on the syringe. "Half."

Jason stared him down for a long moment before dumping a quarter of the dosage back into the vial and raising an eyebrow in question. Reese still looked reluctant but allowed him to administer the injection and managed to drink a few sips of water before the medication took hold to the extent that he had no choice but to give in to sleep.

* * *

John's head was filled with cotton, cotton which cushioned the hammering inside his skull, but made it difficult to string two thoughts together. There were two thoughts that absolutely refused to be dampened, though. First, he owed Finch his life. Again. Second, he needed a shower - immediately if not sooner. Dizziness and pain assaulted him in waves as he slowly crawled out of bed and staggered drunkenly toward the bathroom, but the need to be clean was driving him hard. He could still smell the interrogation room at Rikers, the leaking antifreeze from the car crash, his own sweat mixed with the nylon straps of the bomb vest.

He paused in the hallway, eyeing the linen closet. There was a bottle of scotch inside, tucked neatly behind a pile of Egyptian cotton sheets. It would be a simple thing to retrieve it and erase all of those memories from existence for awhile. He could almost feel the familiar, numbing burn of the alcohol in his throat. In his mind's eye, he could see the label: very expensive, very foreign. Kara used to make him drink it when she didn't feel like having sex with the Boy Scout.

The burn in his throat suddenly became real as acid and bile rose up. He gagged and backed away. His palm slapped the outside of the glass shower partition and he braced against it for a couple of seconds, catching his breath before stepping in. The room soon filled with steam, but somehow the water stayed stubbornly cold. John scrubbed and shivered and scrubbed some more, until there were red patches on his skin. When his knees gave out, he landed on the tiled bench and leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and allowed the spray to roll over his chest and torso.

Time passed. He didn't remember turning off the water, or wrapping himself in a towel, but his shivering eventually roused him enough that he realized he'd done neither. Jason stood before him, arms crossed, a towel around his neck, his Star Wars t-shirt half-soaked. He was wearing an expression of extreme patience, but John suspected that, deep down, he was probably quite annoyed. Then again, Santori was one of the most tolerant people he'd ever met, so he couldn't be sure. "Sorry, needed a shower," Reese said around chattering teeth, pulling the towel closer about himself in an attempt to stave off the chills.

"I get that. What you didn't need was the exertion."

"Sorry," Reese apologized again, glancing around with a puzzled frown. He recalled waking up and wanting a shower, but the actual trip to the bathroom was lost somewhere in the days of anxiety, pain, and psychotic ex-partners that he'd just endured. He wanted to be angry, to sit down with Harold and figure out exactly what Stanton had set in motion with that hard drive, to find her and retire her like he'd been given the opportunity to years ago, but instead he found himself longing for his bed as Santori waved off the apology.

"I should've been paying closer attention. I'm just glad you made it in here without falling."

Reese looked at him and shivered.

Jason looked back appraisingly. "Stay put, I'll be right back."

* * *

2 a.m. may have been the respite from the craziness of the night shift, Jason thought, but it always seemed to come at the cost of 4 a.m., when one or two emergencies arose out of the blue, striking like an alarm clock in a dead sleep and chasing away any measure of calm he'd achieved. Tonight it had been a silent alarm, when he'd awoken from a light doze and found John's bed empty. A quick glance had confirmed that Harold was still asleep across the room, but Reese was nowhere in sight.

It hadn't taken him long to track down the injured man, but Jason didn't relax until he'd turned off the shower and confirmed that Reese was just asleep where he sat and was no worse for wear than before. He should've been more careful, knowing John's past response to medication, but he'd honestly thought the man too exhausted to stand up, let alone walk. Fever could do a lot, too, though. John hadn't stopped shivering in the time it had taken him to retrieve an armful of clothing and another towel, and placing a hand to Reese's forehead revealed enough heat to support that theory. "Were you sick before you were taken hostage?" he asked.

"No, why?"

Santori shrugged. "Your temp's pretty high. Just ruling out possible causes, though I think what you need most right now is sleep. May I?" he asked, indicating the towel he'd brought.

John nodded tiredly in assent and set to work with his own towel, but he was slow and uncoordinated in his motions and eventually gave up in deference to Jason's expediency. Apparently Santori had experience in such matters, because although Reese dozed off twice in the process, he somehow ended up dry and dressed with very little effort on his part, and then back in bed with only the vaguest recollection of Jason guiding him there. "Hot," he mumbled to no one in particular, because it was, unbearably so. The room was stifling and his body felt like it was burning. He looked around, searching for the source of the heat, and froze when he saw the mass of straps and wires and C4 around his chest. His stomach lurched sickeningly and the world tilted. No. Finch had followed him onto the rooftop, had gotten the vest off. This wasn't real...was it? Although he knew the illogic of the action, Reese thrashed wildly, clawing at his chest, trying to eliminate the oppressive heat of the vest. His hand banged against something solid and distant pain flared in his knuckles before cool fingers closed around his wrist.

"Whoa, hey, take it easy, you're okay."

"Take it off. _Please_. Get it off of me."

From his frantic motions, Jason could only guess as to what Reese might be referring, and he quickly folded the rumpled covers back, placing his palm flat on the man's sternum, both to restrain and ground him. "It's off, John. There's nothing there. You're all right."

Still anxious, Reese reflexively grabbed Jason's wrist. "Too hot," he repeated.

Santori winced at the sudden vise around his arm, but covered John's hand with his other and gave him a pained smile. "I know. I think your fever's starting to break. I want you to try to rest for awhile, okay?"

John seemed to accept the statement and responded with a shaky nod. His eyes traveled around the entire room before settling back on Jason and then on himself. After several moments of further scrutiny in which he appeared to come to the conclusion that 'it' really was gone, he finally relaxed. His grip relented too and Jason was able to free his wrist, but the damage had already been done. Bright red marks in the shape of John's fingers stood out vividly on his skin and would soon form substantial bruises. Jason flexed his hand a couple of times and winced again, rubbing the limb gingerly as he turned to the nightstand and retrieved a washcloth from the bowl of cool water he'd set out earlier. When he turned back, John's glassy eyes were barely open and he could tell the man was already dozing. Santori drew the cloth across his patient's face and neck, cleaning away the sheen of sweat that had formed there, and John's eyelids slipped the rest of the way closed. He rinsed the cloth, folded it, and placed it back on Reese's forehead before pulling the sheet up to the sick man's shoulders. The blankets he left folded aside in further effort to bring John's temperature down.

* * *

Reese awoke to the sound of quiet coughing, but it took him awhile to realize that it was coming from him. His throat felt like sandpaper, and he tried and failed to remember the last time he'd had a drink of water. It may as well have been years - and the Dasani bottle perched on his nightstand may as well have been across the room. He'd caught sight of it in the process of turning onto his good side, but his arm felt like it had turned to lead and after all the coughing it hurt his ribs to move anyway, so he quickly gave up the effort to reach it and lay watching the sky fade from black to gray. Either Jason hadn't been entirely straight with him earlier or fevers took a long damn time to break, because while he felt marginally cooler than before, he also felt...well, exactly as terrible as he should have under the circumstances, he supposed.

His parched throat threatened again, and John made a more focused effort to reach the water. This time, his fingertips actually brushed against it before his strength failed. He closed his eyes in frustration and was gathering his determination to try again when the familiar plastic shape materialized in his outstretched hand. Reese looked at it in confusion for a second or two, until he picked up on the sound of retreating footsteps and then the slight creak of a chair as someone sat down nearby.

"Just a little to start," Santori's voice cautioned.

It was good advice, John found, as the meager amount of water he'd already managed to swallow had lessened the scratchiness in his throat, but sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach. "What happened?" he asked, angling his head so he could see the other man.

"How much do you remember?"

Reese took another drink of water, growing troubled by the P.A.'s unreadable expression. Jason was usually an open book unless he had bad news to deliver. At those times, he had as good a poker face as Harold. John's mind raced. He could recall a few brief flashes of coherence scattered amidst awful narcotic-induced nightmares and bouts of uncontrollable shivering, but nothing that should have been cause for alarm. Had he said something to Santori about the Machine or the numbers? About Donnelly or the Man in a Suit? Doubtful, or the feds would've probably already broken down his door.

"I remember taking a shower and falling asleep," Reese answered slowly, trying to rewind to the beginning. Almost immediately he wished he hadn't. His jaw clenched, as though it could crush the offending memories from existence. "The vest," he said tightly. "Shit...did I hit you? Where's Harold?" John asked as he struggled to sit up.

"Harold's asleep on your couch, and no, you didn't hit me. Here, lean back," Santori instructed, taking John's arm and helping him shift position to rest against a stack of pillows that he'd quickly assembled. In the process, Reese caught sight of the darkening lines of fresh bruises on his wrist and physically flinched. Jason sighed. "It's nothing an ice pack won't fix, John. You were delirious. You didn't know what you were doing."

"I'm still responsible," Reese growled, but the self-directed anger quickly fled on an exhausted sigh. "Infection?" he asked after a beat.

Jason shook his head no. "Likely just an unkind reaction from your body to significant fatigue and injury. It happens sometimes."

"What's wrong, then?" John asked suspiciously. If he hadn't done anything and his condition was improving...

Jason's mask slipped just a little and Reese saw enough concern and indecision there to drive his apprehension up a notch, but in the next instant it was gone, replaced by Santori's usual calm demeanor. "I know you won't with me...maybe not even with Harold...but I really think you should talk with someone," Jason said.

"About what?"

"Unexploded ordnance, I believe you called it."

At that, Reese smiled faintly. "You don't enter my former line of work if you can't handle something as relatively minor as a bomb vest. This is nothing new. The dreams will go away in a week or two and I'll be fine."

"I'm not talking about the vest, John. It's all the stuff you're carrying around up here that can prove dangerous as time goes by," Jason said, tapping a finger against his temple. "Snow, Stanton, Ordos."

As the younger man spoke the last, Reese could almost feel the blood draining from his face. "What else did I say while I was out of it?" he asked hoarsely. Santori hesitated a moment too long in answering and John scrubbed a hand over his face. "Dammit."

"Hey," Jason said gently, and waited until John looked at him. "Nothing you said will ever leave this room. You have my word on that. Just give some thought to what I said, all right?"

Reese sighed and finally nodded once in agreement.

"In the meantime, how are you feeling? Is food sounding any better?"

John shrugged. It wasn't, but his ribs ached and the thought of another shot of morphine was far worse than the thought of eating. Jason seemed to get the message.

"You didn't have any soup, but I found some Jell-O and a few crackers," Santori said, and brought over a bowl and a box from the kitchen. "If these go over all right, I'll leave you with some pain medication and be on my way, but I don't want you up and about until tomorrow at the earliest. Complete rest for 24 hours."

John had to resist the urge to roll his eyes when Jason went on to say that he'd leave a note to that effect with Harold. Reese had no doubt it was true (it had happened before) but the fact that Santori thought that he would _want_ to move was almost as laughable as the idea of him talking openly with anyone about his escapades with the CIA. Just eating the Jell-O took enough effort to make him want to sleep again, but he held out long enough to take his medication and sincerely thank Jason for his help and discretion, even if Santori did find it necessary to check his temperature and verify one last time that he had a pulse before he felt content to take his leave.

As the door closed and the lock clicked into place - the first in many days to do so without locking him inside a cage of one sort or another - Reese did think about what Jason had said. He doubted he'd be having any lengthy conversations about his past anytime soon, but being out of the line of fire, however briefly, and surrounded by people who cared if he lived or died and preferred the former...it was enough to reset the countdown on just a few pieces of his internal ordnance. John let his eyes close. In the soft silence of early morning, the only sound was Harold's snoring. He didn't know if it sounded peaceful, but it was closer than he'd ever expected to be again. Maybe today nothing would explode.


End file.
